Saints Andronikos and Athanasia of ÆgyptThe ninth of August is also the feast-day of a married couple of Antioch who became monastics in Ægypt, Saints Andronikos and Athanasia. They were natives of Antioch and lived there during the late fifth and early sixth centuries.
Saint Andronikos [Gk. Ἀνδρόνικος, Ar. ’Andrawnîqûs أندرونيقوس] lived in Antioch and worked as a craftsman, probably as a smith in precious metals. Given that Antioch was a thriving city in trade, being one terminus of the Silk Road, he probably did thriving business in his craft. As a result, he was probably fairly well-to-do, but he earned his money honestly by labour, and divided it into three parts: one part he donated directly to the poor; another part he gave to the Church (and specifically to monastic communities); and the third part he retained for himself and his family. He fell in love with a Christian woman named Athanasia [Gk. Αθανασία, Ar. ’Aṯânâsiyâ اثاناسيا], and they married. They lived together in an ordinary marriage for several years, and had two children: Yaḥyâ and Maryam.
Athanasia encouraged her husband’s selfless habits, and also pursued virtue in her own right. After the birth of their second child, the two of them felt that it was no longer sufficient merely to give money to the poor, and they sought another form of ascetic pursuit. She and Andronikos decided by mutual agreement to live together as brother and sister, without coupling in the flesh. On Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the husband and wife devoted themselves to serving the poor and destitute: Saint Andronikos would serve the men, washing them and feeding them and clothing them, and Saint Athanasia would serve the women in the same way.
One Sunday, when Yaḥyâ was 12 and Maryam was 10, Athanasia returned home from her ministry to the poor, and found both of her children seriously ill in bed, with high fevers. When her husband came home, he went straightaway to the shrine of Saint ’Ilyân the Unmercenary of Homs to pray for healing – after all, Saint ’Ilyân was a pharmacist and he had worked wonders both in life and by the power of his relics for those in need. However, when he returned home, he found that both of their children had died of the illness.
His wife was stricken with grief. She spent her every waking moment praying over the graves of her children, and nothing Andronikos could say, nor any of their friends, could console her. Athanasia continued in this way until she was visited by Saint ’Ilyân, who assured her that although her children had been deprived of good things upon the earth, that God Who is just had not deprived them of the good things that were their heavenly inheritance. Then ’Ilyân gave to her a monastic robe, and clothed her with it, and told her not to weep over her children, but instead over her own sins. In repentance, he assured her, she could rejoin her children in the proper way.
Saint Athanasia went back and told her husband what she had seen, and they agreed then to enter the monastic life. Andronikos sold the business, gave everything he had to Athanasia’s father for the purpose of establishing a monastic wayhouse and hospital, and then went with his wife to Alexandria, in Ægypt – taking with them as their sustenance only a handful each of prosphora. They journeyed together until they came to the shrine of Saint Menas, where they parted ways. Saint Andronikos entered the desert abode of Abba Daniel of Skētis in the Wâdî an-Naṭrûn, and Saint Athanasia entered a women’s convent at Tabenna near what is now Naj‘ Ḥammâdî – both in Ægypt.
Husband and wife thus lived apart under their monastic vows for twelve years. They did not have any sight or physical contact with each other. After this time, the monk Andronikos had a desire to visit the Holy Land and to pray in the Holy Places; his spiritual father gave him permission to leave. Along the way he met a fellow pilgrim to the Holy Places, named Athanasios. This ascetic suggested to Andronikos that they should travel together to Jerusalem for mutual protection, but that they should undertake to do so in silence. The two of them, Athanasios and Andronikos, prayed together at Bethlehem, at Gethsemane, at the Sepulchre. And when they were done they returned to Ægypt, where they requested of Saint Daniel that they might live together in the same cell. This request was granted, and they lived together in companionable silence, growing in virtue.
When Athanasios felt death approaching, the ascetic told Andronikos to take a letter to the abbot, to be opened only after the ascetic’s repose. Athanasios then took the Holy Gifts one last time, and was taken into heaven. All was done in due reverence, but then it was discovered as the body was being prepared for burial that ‘Athanasios’ was, in fact, a woman.
Abba Daniel took the letter that ‘Athanasios’ had left, broke the seal and read it. Within it, he discovered the reason for her dissembling: as it happened, ‘Athanasios’ was indeed the wife of Andronikos – Saint Athanasia. In all their time together, Saint Andronikos had never once recognised his wife, though she knew him well enough from the start. (This aspect of the hagiography of Saints Andronikos and Athanasia seems to have been the basis, at least in part, for one of the plot devices in Edith Pargeter’s eleventh book in the Cadfael series, An Excellent Mystery.)
Saint Andronikos reposed only ten days after his wife. They had lived together conjugally, parented children together, then as brother and sister, and finally as fellow monastics urging each other toward greater heights of virtue. They shared together, finally, in sainthood. Holy monastics Andronikos and Athanasia, inseparable fellows in life and in æternity, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion for Saints Andronikos and Athanasia, Tone 1:
You adorned your divinely-wrought robe of chastity
With the sublime varied colors of sacred virtues in God,
When with one accord ye strove in the ascetic life.
Wherefore, your silence on the earth was received equally
With the thrice-holy hymn in heaven;
O wise Andronikos, pray God, with Athanasia, that we all be saved.
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